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The Good Neighbours garden is now getting much more sunshine now that the big willow tree has been pollarded. We have also started getting into have a small fire to cook baked potatoes, veggie sausages and the like at our Friday morning get togethers

Charlotte visisted the garden recently and is pictured here with one of the late flowering cosmos flowers that Tony had planted

Garden has been doing well recently, but not enough sunshine (for us and the plants). Still, we are beginning to enjoy some produce including rhubarb, peas, beans, courgettes, cauliflower, garlic and red currants. Rain eventually stopped play today (15th July) but beginning to think about our plans for the future, including some additional raised beds

On Friday 19th September members of the Good Neighbours gardening club were out in the garden enjoying yer another lovely day. What a great September it has been for weather. You can see below some of the produce we have been picking

Here Tony shows us the ripening tomatoes in the greenhouse. These are Ferline tomatoes. Even the ones outside have been doing well and are now ripening up

A wider shot of the greenhouse shows how many of the tomaties are ripening. The smaller, orangey tomatoes are a variety called Sungold. They are one of the tasties tomatoes I have come across

In this video Tony tells us some jokes. Each week he has a selection from each week’s jokes he has on a calendar (there is a joke for each day). As you can see, some are better than others!

We welcomed Paul back to the gardening group at Chorlton Good Neighbours, after he had been out of action for several months. We filled some bags with earth and put in some of the chitted potatoes and continued with the weeding of the Church garden at the fron

In the video, Geraldine explains the day’s plan

Tony brought some glass beads and a tile which he had found at the Oxfam shop. They will be used as part of the mosaic making project with a parent from Oswald Road Primary school who has been involved in similar project with the school

We spent the usual Friday morning, working (with plenty of stops for tea & coffee) in the Good Neighbours garden. Weather was the best of the year so far and we got plenty done. Lots of new seeds put into seed trays to germinate in the greenhouse. We included some exotic flowers & vegetables like quinoa and rats tales ‘chilli’ radishes

Here is Bill in the greenhouse

Some of the seed trays in the greenhouse

Geraldine and Bill potting up some seeds

Paulette weeding the Church’s front garden. Where we have weeded we scattered some wild flower seeds to brighten up the area

Tony surveying his work

The tomato plants that Bernard has re-potted for later planting in the CGN greenhouse/The two varieties are Sungold and Ferline. Sungold are some of the tastiest tomatoes around and Ferline are supposed to show some resistance to blight, fusarium and verticillium wilt

Spring is happening but on this Friday in March (14-03-14) the weather was a bit chilly, especially as the previous Wednesday had been very warm.

We used our time productively to put a new hard tyre wheel on the wheelbarrow (why they usually have pneumatic tyres, that always puncture or deflate, I don’t know). We also moved some of the unrotted compost & leaves from the side of the greenhouse and put it in bags to slowly rot down

We were able to use our refurbished wheelbarrow to take them all to the back of the Church Hall where we intend to plant some fruit bushes when we get round to it

We also planted some onions sets – white Stuttgarter Giant and red Karmen which we planted in one of the raised beds. Some of our onions have over-wintered well in the other raised bed so hopefully we will get a succession of onions to pick later in the summer

Tony bagging up some of the semi-rotted compost

Geraldine & Tony having a chat about what to do nextPlanting the onion sets

Here are some of the group enjoying the spring like sunshine on the last day of February – Paulette, Bernard, Geraldine and Tony

We had ordered the three replacement panes of strengthened glass and John came to put those in. That, together with the 6 panes that we had put back the previous week meant that the greenhouse was now back to its complete self. Let’s just hope we don’t get gales like the ones we had in January again soon

We always make time to have a cup of tea and a biscuit

Peter who had been one of the first volunteers in the garden has recently moved to Preston, but on his visit to Manchester he came down to see how the garden was going and was very impressed

At the side of the garden, behind the church is a narrow passageway

At the far end it widens out and we thought that maybe we could plant some fruit bushes that can take it being a bit shady (though as you can see it does get some sun)Here is Tony spraying the weeds to clear the ground before we try to find out how best to enrich the soil and plant some bushes

This Friday (19-02-14) we had John’s assistance in beginning to repair the greenhouse after the damage caused by the recent gale. Altogether 9 windows were blown out and 3 of them smashed. So the reinforced glass stood up pretty well and the pieces of glass weren’t dangerous shards but like the starred bits from a shattered windscreen

John putting in the butterfly clips to hold in an intact window pane being replaced in the greenhouse

Another pane of glass ready to go back in

Geraldine and Bill inspecting the newly planted seed trays

One of the angled pieces of glass that survived being put back into place

Bill carrying a watering can ready to water the seedlings

Tony looking ascsheerful as ever

Newcomer Tom and CGN worker Diane inspecting the greenhouseBill collecting some of the finished compost ready to put on the raised beds

The great storm of 13th Feb 2014 will certainly be remembered in Manchester. With winds of over 70 mph buildings were damaged and trees were blown down all over the place. When we came for the Good Neighbours gardening group meeting on Friday 4th Feb we found that the greenhouse has been damaged with 9 or 10 panes of glass blown out of the greenhouse

Bill looking through one of the broken panes in the greenhouse after the storm. Fortunately because the glass was toughened it appeared that only one had been smashed. Even though the other panes had been blow out and were scattered around they appeared to undamaged

Contemplating the storm damageTwo top panes of glass are missing as you can see at the right of this photo

Tony looks for missing clips and pieces of rubber that might come in useful when we try and repair the damageTony shows all the intact panes of glass that were blown out by the wind, but managed to come through the storm unscathed

The day wasn’t all bad news though. We now have a new part-time gardening club coordinator, Geraldine Wall who joined us today.

Here is Geraldine the new CGN Garden coordinator on the left with Bill and another new CGN suoort worker, Diane Dixon on the right. Diane came along to see the garden group in operation in her first week in post

Diane DixonToday Geraldine gave us her views on compost. We braved the elements to inspect the existing wooden compost bins before we scurried indoors to escape the rain

Jan 24th was t our second meeting of the new year. It was a cold morning but we got ourselves organised and started clearing up properly in preparation for Spring which is not that far away

Here Bernard is spraying the greenhouse with a Jeyes fluid mixture to clean and sterilise it after we removed all the debris and clutter than had accumulated Hopefully, this will prevent diseases emerging when we plant in the greenhouse later on

Paulette warming herself up with a cup of coffee

Bill and Mark having a break

Tony looking at the various packets of seeds to decide which we should begin to plant in seed trays

Tony offering Peter a biscuitSome seed trays filled with potting compost ready for seeds. We planted some Pak Choi, radishes and salad leaves. Next to come will be tomatoes which will need to be kept indoors to germinated